


The Stepmom

by asexualjuliet



Series: The Words I Most Regret (are the ones I never meant to leave) [2]
Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I love Kendall a lot and I have No Idea Why, Implied/Referenced Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Mass Murder, Implied/Referenced Rape, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, Mom Kendall: a new and good concept, Post-episode: s02e22 Not Pictured
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:07:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26877178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asexualjuliet/pseuds/asexualjuliet
Summary: Kendall is no one’s mother.Or, Kendall and Dick make their way through the summer after everything goes down.
Relationships: Kendall Casablancas & Dick Casablancas, Kendall Casablancas & Gia Goodman
Series: The Words I Most Regret (are the ones I never meant to leave) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1982077
Comments: 11
Kudos: 8





	The Stepmom

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally 300-ish words long, and it was just the scene where Kendall fights over the phone with the funeral director, but I was waiting to post it until after broadway_hufflepuff finished season 2 (which she did yesterday—she was not pleased lmao), and while waiting to post it I just kept writing more and more, so here’s the finished product!
> 
> The working title for this was “pour one out for all my problematic faves.” Shoutout to broadway_hufflepuff for beta-ing (even though she provided no more feedback than “POUR ONE OUT FOR THE **EMOTIONAL HURRICANE OF SADNESS** YOU JUST GAVE ME WHAT THE FUCK.” thanks Mary.
> 
> AU from the end of Not Pictured: Kendall isn’t with Aaron when he dies, Kendall stays in Neptune, and Dick deals with his shit slightly earlier on.
> 
> Title based off that Julia Roberts movie that I just looked up and found out it’s just called “Stepmom.” whoops.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!!

Kendall is no one’s mom. 

Sure, she’s Cassidy’s “acting guardian,” but if she’s being honest, she’s pretty sure that doesn’t mean shit. Cassidy’s more than capable of taking care of himself, and Kendall doesn't have to do much for him besides being the CEO of his land trust thing. 

So yeah, she’s Cassidy's acting guardian, but Dick Junior’s eighteen, and Kendall’s got no obligation to him whatsoever. He’s the textbook definition of a rich, popular high school jackass, and he seems to be trying as hard as he can to live up to his name. 

So she doesn’t answer his first call. Or his second. Or his third. If he’s calling to ask for a ride home from jail or some shit, she thinks she’ll leave him hanging, at least for a few hours. 

The fourth time her phone rings, she answers with venom in her voice. “What the hell do you want?” she asks, and she’s ready to shoot down whatever his request may be, but then—

“Beaver’s dead,” he says, and she hears him burst into tears. 

_Holy shit._

_“What?”_ she asks, because _holy fucking shit._

“Cassidy’s _dead,”_ he says, “and I need a ride home from the sheriff’s office.”

_Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy fucking shit._

“Holy shit,” Kendall says. “Yeah, I’ll be right there. Holy shit, what happened? Are you okay?”

“He—he jumped—” the kid tries, before letting loose another sob that makes Kendall’s heart ache. 

“He jumped off the roof of the Grand,” he says after a few seconds, and that’s all that he manages before he starts crying again. 

“Oh my God,” she breathes. “Shit, kid, I’ll be there in fifteen.”

-

Kendall’s pretty sure she breaks every speed limit in Neptune on her drive to the sheriff’s office. She makes it across town in ten minutes flat and walks through the door with as much authority as she can muster. 

“Hi, I’m looking for Dick Casablancas, Junior,” she says to the woman at the front desk, who gestures to Kendall’s left. 

She turns to see Dick sitting in a chair, wiping his eyes on his sweatshirt sleeve. His hair is messy and his eyes are puffy, and he looks more pathetic than Kendall’s ever seen him. 

“Do I have to sign anything?” she asks, turning back to the receptionist, who shakes her head. 

“Um, okay,” Kendall says. “Thanks—” she glances at the woman’s nameplate “—Inga.”

Inga nods. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she says, in a thick German accent. Kendall gives her a sad smile and turns back to Dick. 

“Let’s go,” she says, and the concern in her voice surprises her. 

Dick nods jerkily and follows her outside. 

They’re halfway to the car when she hears a retch from behind her and jumps back. 

“Oh my God!” she says, turning around to see Dick hunched over his shoes, vomit staining the ground below him. “Are you drunk?”

He doesn’t answer at first, eyes squeezed tight. She gives him a second, and he shakes his head. 

“No.”

Which doesn’t really track. It’s graduation night, and if Kendall knows Dick, he’s spent the last few hours getting drunk off his ass. 

But then he says, “I wish I was,” and yeah, okay, Kendall buys that. 

A silence falls over them, only broken when Dick says, in a strained voice, “Can we go home?”

He sounds scared and sad and helpless as fuck, and Kendall nods. 

“Yeah,” she says gently. “Sure.”

Dick wipes his shoes in the grass and follows Kendall to her car. 

He cries the whole way home. 

-

She doesn’t expect Dick to be awake when she gets downstairs the next morning. 

She’s wrong. 

“Logan, dude, pick up your phone,” she hears his voice say as she makes her way downstairs. He sounds slightly panicked, and she stops where she is in order to hear him clearly. 

“Shit, man, everyone’s saying the bus crash was Beaver’s fault, and I don’t know what the _fuck’s_ going on, but I _know_ Ronnie knows and I know you know, and you fucking _need_ to call me back. Logan, what the _fuck_ is going on?”

_Holy shit._

Kendall slips silently into the living room and turns on the TV. 

“—Mayor Woody Goodman was killed last night in a plane explosion that occurred as he was being escorted to Balboa County Jail. Authorities are saying the explosion was tied to the September bus crash off the Pacific Coast Highway. A reliable source has confirmed that Neptune High student Cassidy Casablancas was behind both bombings—”

Kendall shuts the TV off. 

_Holy fucking shit._

-

She tries Logan’s suite at the Neptune Grand first, vehemently ignoring the camera crews outside. 

No one answers, and she heads to the Mars girl’s apartment. 

-

“Now, Kendall, you know I’m taken,” says Logan cheekily when he opens the front door. 

“What the fuck happened to Cassidy?” she asks, and Logan bites his lip. 

“I think you should talk to Veronica,” he says, before awkwardly adding, “Um, come in.”

She obliges and shuts the door behind her. 

-

The story is _so_ much more fucked up than Kendall could have ever imagined. She tries and fails to organize the information in her head as she drives home. 

She doesn’t know how she’s going to tell Dick Junior. She doesn’t think he’s going to take it well. 

-

(She’s right).

-

She lets him get away with the drinking for the first week. He spends his days in a drunken haze and his nights puking up the booze, and Kendall honestly can’t blame him. 

_Yeah,_ the kid was a murderer, and _yeah,_ he was a rapist, but he was also Dick’s brother. Hell, the situation kind of makes _Kendall_ want to drink the day away, and she barely knew him. 

She empties the liquor cabinet after a week, hides all the booze under her bed. Sure, her methods might not be the kindest, but the kid’s gotta deal with his shit, and it’ll be a lot easier for both of them if he’s sober. 

He bursts into her room without knocking approximately forty-five minutes later. 

“Hello to you too,” she says, a condescending smile on her face. 

“Where’d you put it?” Dick asks angrily, and Kendall feigns ignorance. 

“Where’d I put what?” she asks innocently. 

“Don’t fuck around with me, Kendall,” he says. “I don’t even know why you’re still here.”

“Your dad never kicked me out,” she says. “You know, legally, we’re still married, so _tu casa es mi casa,_ right?”

“Then _I’ll_ kick you out.”

Kendall just looks at him, and with all the saccharine sweetness in the world, says “I don’t think so, sweetheart.”

Dick flips her the bird and storms out. 

He goes to sleep sober. 

(Kendall doesn’t).

-

Kendall takes care of the funeral arrangements. 

Her husband’s MIA (son of a bitch can’t even bother to call) and the ex can’t be bothered (if Dick was a shitty dad, Betina’s an even shittier mom) and Dick Junior’s drowning in his own grief (for all his flaws, she can tell he cared about the kid. Sometimes he cries himself to sleep in his brother’s bed. Kendall pretends she doesn’t hear).

So Kendall steps up to the plate. 

She files the paperwork, writes the name _Cassidy Miles Casablancas_ so many times that it stops looking like a name, and gets into a screaming match over the phone with the owner of the town cemetery. 

“You can’t deny me the right to bury the kid!” Kendall yells into the receiver. “I know what he did! I’m not stupid, this entire fucking _town_ knows it! Have you watched the true crime documentary yet? Believe me, sir, I’m well aware!”

The owner goes on and on, seemingly unphased by Kendall’s shouting, about privately-owned public property. Kendall’s so fucking mad she could throw something. 

“His entire family’s buried in that cemetery!” she points out. “You’re gonna force me to bury this kid alone?”

The asshole on the other side of the phone starts to talk and Kendall cuts him off. 

“I _know_ he was a murderer!” she shouts. _“God,_ we’ve been _over_ this! He was abused and traumatized and _thoroughly_ fucked up, and I’d like to bury him in the family plot!”

She slams the phone down before the man on the other side can answer and looks up to find Dick Junior staring up at her from an empty door frame. 

“You okay?” she asks, disconcerted at how immediately the words of concern escape her mouth— _Get a grip, Kendall, it’s not like you’re his_ mother. 

“I’m _fine,”_ he spits, shoving his hands in his pockets and storming away. 

Kendall sighs. 

She’s not going to bother asking him if he wants to come pick out a casket. 

-

The Goodman girl is standing in front of the funeral home when Kendall gets there, which is awkward as fuck and only made more awkward by the fact that her little brother is standing by her side. 

The kid’s nine, maybe ten, and Kendall can’t help but imagine Cassidy at that age. The boy in front of her is small and scared _(maybe even more so than Cassidy was—God knows what this kid’s father’s done to him)_ and in her mind's eye, Kendall sees a younger Cassidy, dressed in a little league uniform and wearing the same look of perpetual fear the Goodman kid is wearing. 

The thought makes her feel slightly sick, and she prepares to breeze by the girl and her brother on her way into the funeral home. 

She slows down halfway to the door. If the kids are outside, the mother is inside, and Kendall _really_ doesn’t want to deal with the _your kid killed my husband_ shit today (or ever), partly because he’s _not_ her kid (she’s _not_ old enough to have a sixteen-year-old, and even if she was, she thinks she’d probably have raised him better than Dick and Betina, and maybe then all this shit could have been avoided), and partly because she’s developed a kind of protectiveness of him. 

It’s strange. She didn’t really give him a second thought when he was alive, and _God,_ how fucked up is it that she’s only getting attached after he’s killed twelve people?

“Are you Cassidy’s stepmom?” asks the Goodman girl when Kendall walks by her. Kendall sighs. 

“Kendall,” she says, turning back to face the girl and her brother. 

“I’m Gia,” the girl says, and then, hesitating, adds “Goodman.”

“Yeah,” says Kendall, and if the prospect of the _your kid killed my husband_ shit was bad, it’s nothing compared to _your stepson killed my dad._

But Gia doesn’t lay the blame. Instead she just looks at Kendall with sad eyes and says “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Kendall tells her, because even though Gia’s father was a fucking monster, he was still her _dad,_ and she shouldn’t have to apologize to the family of his murderer. 

“I am,” says Gia. “I—it wasn’t his fault.”

Kendall looks Gia up and down. 

“Kid,” she says. “I know you’re trying to do, like, the honorable thing right now, but you don’t have to. I’m not gonna call you out for hating the kid who killed your dad.”

Gia swallows; looks down at the kid next to her, who seems to be occupied by a pink iPod clearly belonging to his sister. 

“My dad did a lot worse to him,” she says quietly, and Kendall’s once again confronted by the image of a little kid in a baseball uniform, too small and sad and fucking _terrified_ for his nine short years. 

She blinks hard, tries to will the picture out of her mind. She sighs. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she says. She takes one last look at Gia and her brother _(God, he reminds her of Cassidy)_ and heads into the funeral home. 

-

The more questions Kendall is confronted with, the more she realizes she didn’t know shit about the kid. 

_Cremation or burial? Do you want a religious ceremony? Have you written an obituary?_

Kendall has never spared much thought to the idea of writing an obituary before. It turns out she’s fucking terrible at it. 

What were the kid’s passions? Accomplishments? What did he do for fun?

Kendall doesn’t know. 

Dick Junior hasn’t left the house in weeks, and Kendall doesn’t quite know how he’ll react to her asking for help with this, but he’s kind of the only one who knew shit about his brother. 

“Hey, can I come in?” Kendall asks, knocking lightly on Cassidy’s bedroom door. 

(Dick spends most of his time there. Kendall would be lying if she said that didn’t make her want to cry).

“Sure,” the voice inside says, the most encouraging answer she’s gotten from him since _before._

She opens the door. The kid’s sitting on his brother’s bed with a notebook in his lap. His face is red and puffy, and Kendall pretends she doesn’t notice. 

“I’m writing the obituary,” she says, “and I just—you knew him better than anyone, so I was wondering—”

“Will the paper even print that?” Dick asks, cutting her off. 

“Wh—”

“The graveyard won’t even let us bury his fucking _body._ What makes you think the newspaper’s gonna be willing to celebrate the life of the Neptune Teen Bomber?”

“I mean, freedom of the press, right?” Kendall asks. Dick stays silent. 

“I just thought we should try,” she says. 

There’s a silence. Kendall’s about to leave when Dick says “He liked poetry.”

“What?”

“Those death notices always, like, talk about the person’s passions or whatever. He liked—he wrote poetry,” he says again, gesturing to the notebook in his lap. 

“Really?” Kendall asks. Dick nods. 

“It’s mostly just dark and twisted and sad as fuck,” he tells her, flipping through the pages. “But there are some, like, I don’t know, not happy ones, exactly, but ones that don’t make me want to throw myself off a fucking cliff.”

Kendall winces at his word choice, but nods regardless. 

“Is there anything else?” she asks. “Anything I should write?”

“I can write it,” says Dick, and Kendall just looks at him. 

“You sure?”

“I’m his—” he cuts off. “—I was his brother,” he says, and Kendall nods. 

“Yeah,” she says. “That sounds good.”

-

Kendall has never wanted to be a mom. 

She hates kids. They’re messy and rude and selfish and loud, and after they’re done being kids, they turn into teenagers, who are almost worse. 

Somehow, though, she finds herself checking up on Dick Junior that night. She doesn’t even bother to knock on his bedroom door, going straight to Cassidy’s room and knocking there. When she gets no answer, she slowly creaks the door open to find the kid asleep in bed, the notebook of poetry held close to his chest. 

He looks younger in sleep. Less angry. Less sad. 

Carefully, she extracts the notebook from his grip and sets it on Cassidy’s desk. 

Before she even realizes that it’s happening, her eyes are scanning the words on the paper—careful cursive that seems oh-so-in-character for the boy she thought she knew.

_eight years old and_

_you smile a lot_

_you still think your parents love you_

_and you love the life you’ve got._

_nine years old and_

_you pled and you pled_

_but he didn’t listen_

_and you wish you were dead._

As a general rule of thumb, Kendall doesn’t cry. She used to joke that she’d had her tear ducts surgically removed. Kendall is stone cold, unfeeling, unbreaking.

Those careful cursive words make her cry for the first time in a long time.

-

Five people show up to the funeral. The church seems impossibly huge. 

Betina flew in from Chicago for the funeral. Kendall kind of wishes she hadn’t. She stands with a stiff arm around her son, and Dick’s so out of it that he doesn't even try to shake her off. 

Logan, his girlfriend, and Cassidy’s ex all sit in the same pew, holding hands. Gia Goodman stands in the back of the church in a dark coat and sunglasses. Kendall waves. Gia pretends not to see her. 

Dick starts crying before the service even starts. His silent tears slowly devolve into full-body sobs as he stands at the front of the church and struggles to read a eulogy. 

Kendall looks to his mother, standing stone-faced and still, and she can barely fight the surge of rage she feels. Kendall’s no one’s mother, but if she was, she’s pretty sure she’d be lightyears better than Betina. 

Dick’s shaking now, stuttering his way through the speech, and Kendall can barely watch as the little dignity he has gets washed away. 

At one point, his words stop being words and he’s just _sobbing_ in front of everyone. His mother still doesn’t make a move. 

_Fuck it,_ Kendall thinks. She makes her way up to the front of the church and steps in front of Dick, blocking him from the guests’ view. 

“Go take a second, okay?” she says, and she doesn’t need to tell him twice before he’s heading out of the church as fast as he can, leaving Kendall standing alone. 

“Thank you all for coming,” she says. “The deceased will be buried at Carroll Cemetery later today.”

People start to get out of their seats. 

All in all, Kendall thinks she did an okay job with this funeral thing.

-

She finds Dick outside, back pressed against the sturdy stone wall as he hugs his knees tight. 

“Hey,” she says, sitting down next to him and smoothing out her skirt. “We’re heading to the cemetery now.”

“You’re not my mom,” Dick says, venom in his words. “You’re _not_ my mom and I’m not a little kid, so stop fucking treating me like one!”

“Dick—” 

“No! God, I’m fucking sick of it! I’m an _adult_ and you’re my dad’s _bitchy_ trophy wife who only married him for his money then got pissed when it all went to us! Stay in your _fucking_ lane, Kendall!”

“I’m not your mom,” Kendall agrees. “But yours doesn’t seem to give a shit and you’re in dire need of, I don’t know, literally _any person_ _who will talk to you,_ so I’m responsible for making sure you don’t drink yourself to death or some shit before you turn nineteen.”

Dick wipes his eyes on his shirt sleeve. Kendall sighs; lets her tone get gentle. 

“Take a minute,” she says. “I’ll be in the car.”

Dick nods, and Kendall stands up and heads for the car. 

-

They bury the kid two towns over, at the only cemetery that would take his body. 

Dick shovels the dirt over the casket, slowly and deliberately. 

Kendall pretends she doesn’t hear him crying the whole way home. 

-

“The eulogy was lovely,” Kendall says that night, as they eat leftovers out of Chinese takeout boxes. 

“Bullshit,” says Dick, stuffing his face with lo mein. After swallowing his food, he adds, quietly, “His would have been better.”

“Don’t say that,” Kendall says. Dick shrugs. 

“I know you liked him better. It’s fine, you were probably the only one, but you were right, y’know? I wish it was me, too.”

“Dick—”

“I know he was, like, a murderer and a rapist and all that shit, but he was a better brother than me,” Dick says, taking another mouthful of noodles. 

Kendall doesn’t quite know what to say. The thing is, Dick’s _right_. Cassidy cooked dinner and did the laundry and took care of his brother when he was drunk off his ass. It’s been a month, and Kendall still can’t quite equate the boy she knew with the one on every news channel. 

“I think if I was him, I would hate me,” Dick says.

“He didn’t,” Kendall tells him. This she is sure of. Behind all his anger and hate, Cassidy did look up to his brother. Kendall can’t quite figure out why. 

“He should’ve,” Dick says, and Kendall doesn’t know how to respond. 

“I should’ve known,” Dick says, a few seconds later. “He wasn’t always all—all quiet and sensitive and shit. I should’ve realized—”

“You were just a kid,” she says. 

Dick shrugs. “So was he.”

Kendall can’t argue with that. 

-

Kendall has never wanted to be a mother, but somehow she finds herself getting attached to the kid. 

And if _his_ mom’s not gonna do shit, she figures there’s really no one else to step up to the plate. 

-

The day before he leaves for college, she finds him going through boxes of his brother’s things. 

“Hey,” she says softly, leaning against the doorframe. 

Dick looks up. “Hey,” he says. His face is stained with tears. 

“I don’t know what to get rid of,” he says, after a few seconds of silence. 

She advances into the room, sits down next to the kid and looks into the cardboard box in front of him. 

Carefully, she lifts an old little league uniform out of the box and pretends it doesn’t make her heart ache. 

The shirt is _so fucking small,_ Kendall can barely handle it. He was a _kid,_ and sometimes she thinks she forgets that _(when she turns on the TV, makes eye contact with the Goodman girl, drives past the cliff where he took his first victims)._ Now all of a sudden, it hits her in the chest like a ton of bricks. 

Dick lets out a sob next to her, and, after considering for a moment, she pulls him into a tentative hug. 

He doesn’t push her away. 

-

Life goes on. 

Dick goes to college. Kendall makes eight million dollars. Big Dick goes to jail, and Kendall files for divorce. 

Dick comes back from college for the holidays; brings Logan with him, and it should be awkward but it isn’t. They sit on the couch and watch shitty movies and chow down on Chinese takeout. 

And Kendall is not a mother.

(But for the first time in her life, she thinks she sees the appeal).

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> All mistakes are my own, please let me know if you see any!
> 
> Kudos/Comments are greatly appreciated!


End file.
